We came to the expanse of a dark, cool lake. Elijah smiled broadly and said, “Last one in has to kiss Lady Gertrude’s saggy old face the next time she visits.”
“Yeah right!” We both knew how to swim, so we discarded our clothes and jumped in. The water was ice cold, but we didn’t care. Elijah did a cannonball, and I splashed him in the face. We waded around, looking for fish in the dark.
As the night grew longer, we pulled ourselves out of the pond and got redressed, covered in algae from the lake. I shivered on the shore and put my arms around me.
“Are you cold?” Elijah asked.
“A little.” I shivered again. Elijah took off his coat and put it around my shoulders, giving me a pat on the back.
Elijah was my little cousin, but I felt like he looked out for me more than I looked out for him. Elijah jumped to his feet and said, “You wanna play King Kent and the Masked Caper?”
King Kent and the Masked Caper was the best game, and based off our favorite comic book. We loved making up scary stories to tell in the darkness of the woods, and acting them out as we told them. We giggled as we ran deeper into the woods and hid behind tree trunks, him playing the part of King Kent and me being the Masked Caper.
“Come find me, Caper!” Elijah cried. We picked up big sticks from the ground and pretended they were swords, smacking them together and laughing. Elijah took off, and I rounded the corner behind a boulder, intending on jumping out and surprising him when he ran back this way.
From behind me, there was a terrifying noise. It was slick and wet, like a creature crawling through the mud. I slowly turned around, and came face to face with monstrous teeth.
I let out a scream, and fell backward. The stick dropped from my hand. At the sound of my yell, my cousin came running.
“Ethan!” Elijah’s voice was panicked. Our mouths dropped open as we looked up at the creature in front of us.
It was some sort of fish that walked on land, a scaly monster that was as big as a small dragon. It towered over us, large flippers smacking the ground, and sharp teeth sticking out from large lips. The fish-monster had black eyes, and a fleshy lobe on top of its head that ended in a glowing light, to lure prey in.
A billowbuck. It was a simple monster, fat and lazy, hardly a threat to a grown fae.
But to two small children, it was definitely a danger. The billowbuck had a mouth so large, it could easily swallow Eli and I in one gulp. It most likely lived in the pond we’d just been swimming in, and had been hunting us since we’d left.
The monster let out a hungry growl, and one of its flippers lashed out to pin me to the ground. I let out another scream as the monster’s protruding lips opened to suck me up.
“Let him go, you big ugly thing!” Elijah charged at the monster, raising the tree branch he held. He jabbed it outward, and poked it into the monster’s big, bulbous eye. The monster groaned, and it removed its flipper from my legs. I crawled away, and Elijah ran at the monster, swinging the big stick.
“Back, back!” he ordered it. He poked the monster in the other eye, and the billowbuck shook its head, giving a squinty gaze. It swiped a flipper out at Elijah, but my cousin dodged it. The billowbuck tried to move around Elijah, but he had planted himself in the way and refused to move.
The billowbuck gave an impatient groan. It had obviously decided we were too much of a nuisance to eat, so it moved on with a grumble, looking for easier prey back in the pond.
When it was gone, Elijah reached out a hand and pulled me to my feet. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I brushed off my pants and looked up. “Thanks for saving me.”
“No problem, dear cousin.” He flashed me a smile. “I’m always gonna look out for you.”
I awoke with a gasp.My eyes shot open, and Tygrys let out a growling noise. Emma was still curled up against me, deeply asleep, but as for me, it felt like I’d been drenched in that same ice-cold water from the lake years ago.
What a troublesome dream. It could’ve been considered a happy memory, before, but all those happy memories now were nightmares. It reminded me of the person Elijah had been, and the monster he’d turned out to be.
I couldn’t imagine why my subconscious would subject me to such wicked recollections of my childhood now. I hadn’t thought about such things in years. To think that the boy who’d saved my life from a monster when we were children had become the same man who’d tried to end my life just didn’t make sense. How had things changed so bitterly?
Emma let out a pained cry against me, and I looked down. I couldn’t be perturbed by thoughts of Elijah at a time like this. All that was behind me, and we had major problems to work out in the present. The past needed to stay in the past.
I chanced a look at Emma’s clock. It was almost one. I’d missed lunch, and I had to go to class. I would’ve forgoed it altogether, but Emma insisted one of us had to receive an education, and I was so close to graduating she didn’t want me to throw it all away. I gently got up, so when her head slid off my shoulder and hit the pillow, she didn’t wake. Tygyrs used his magic to open the door knob for me, and I didn’t change back until I was safely away from Emma’s side.
I met Kiara in the hallway. She was shuffling up from the staircase with a collection of potions in her arms.
“They’re for Emma,” Kiara said. “They should help with the pain, and hopefully, some of her symptoms. If it works right, some of her hair should grow back.”
I nodded. Emma was very upset about losing her hair. It was possibly worse to her than the agony. “I saw her this morning. She doesn’t look good, Kiara.”
Kiara bit her lip. “Damn Gabby. Damn Elijah. I hope both of them pay for this.”
